Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 Read Online Free PDF Page B

is where we turn in."
    "Well," said Dr. Fell, "somebody seems to be hailing you. The young lady . . ."
    Alan's heart jumped. He drew up at a white-painted barrier across the entrance to the open auto lobby. With his left hand he pressed a silvered knob on the box-mechanism that controlled the barrier. The mechanism rang, yielding up a punched slip of paper; the barrier rose, and he drove through.
    Then he saw her.
    Slightly taller than Madge Maynard, perhaps a little more slender though with much the same figure, she wore a blue-and-white summer dress of somewhat formal aspect, and raised a pair of sun-glasses at him.
    "Camilla!"
    "Alan!"
    "It's all right, isn't it? They haven't been using a tomahawk, I hope?"
    "No, not lately," said Camilla. She seemed a trifle flustered, no doubt from the warmth of the day. "If you're referring to those horrible old stories, there's a tomahawk in the weapons-room. But it's gone out of fashion nowadays, even as something for you to use on me."
    "On you?"
    For the first time Alan noticed somebody else, and caught himself at once. Behind Camilla towered a burly man in dark suit and dark tie, beginning to put on weight as his years neared fifty. He had a hard jaw but a good-natured eye; his manner was deliberate and ruminating. Camilla's attention remained with Alan.
    "1 haven't done anything wrong, have I?" she asked. "You said you'd be at this hotel, and get here about twelve-thirty. Oh! Forgive me! This is Mr. . . . Lieutenant . . . Captain . . ."
    "Captain Ashcroft," interposed the burly man, "Charleston County Police." His eye woke up. "Mr. Grantham? Dr. Gideon Fell?"
    In the back of the car Dr. Fell arose and bowed, an impressive spectacle. Captain Ashcroft addressed him with great formality.
    "When you've checked in, sir, you and Mr. Grantham, I'd be right glad of a word off the record. Fair enough, sir?"
    "The word, sir," Dr. Fell returned with even more powerful formality, "shall be obtained at lunch. Meanwhile, allow me to frame the question with which my young friend has been struggling. Has there been any disturbance at Maynard Hall?"
    Captain Ashcroft deliberated.
    "Well . . . now!" He extended a hand as though to make mesmeric passes. "Nothing to get excited about, maybe. But you could call it a disturbance if you wanted to. Anyway, somebody stole a scarecrow."
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    "Would you mind repeating that, Camilla? About last Friday night?"
    "The whole story?"
    They had finished lunch in the air-conditioned coffee-shop at the hotel. Camilla Bruce, Alan Grantham, and Captain Ashcroft sat at a table for four. Across the road, beyond a wall of plate-glass window giving on King Street, amid Marion Square's greenery and flowers. John C. Calhoun on his tall column looked south over a city of what
    Dr. Fell had called pastel colors and graceful church-spires.
    Alan, across the table from Camilla, was very conscious of her nearness. Complexion cream and rose, rich brown hair worn almost to her shoulders, dark-blue eyes straying towards the window whenever he tried to catch them, Camilla fidgeted badly. He had been wrong about the formal appearance of her dress; at close range Camilla's figure made it anything but formal.
    'The whole story?" she repeated. "Really—!"
    Captain Ashcroft put his elbows on the table.
    "Now, ma'am," he was insidiously persuasive, "you just do what Mr. Grantham tells you to do. Yes, the whole story; I'd like to hear it again myself. Not about the scarecrow, maybe. To my way of thinking that's not important The no-counts of this world would steal anything! They got your scarecrow, ma'am; nobody else did."
    "The scarecrow," Alan interjected, "wasn't in a cornfield, then?"
    Camilla's gentle voice held a note of pain. "Oh, Alan, you're thinking of The Wizard of Oz!" "Am I?"
    "How often have you seen a scarecrow in a cornfield? People put up scarecrows wherever they think the birds may do some damage. This one, as I've tried to explain, was in the garden at the back of the